Unit – 6

Advertising Appeals

BY – AKRITI BHATTARAI
Advertising Appeals
Appeal refers to the way in which the message is formulated and conveyed to elicit specific
responses from customers.
Types of appeals:
1. Rational Appeals:
Focus on the consumer’s practical, functional or utilitarian need for product or services. Provide
consumers with one or several good reasons to buy the product. Rational appeals can be categorized
into following five sub types:
a. Feature appeal: Focuses on the dominant feature or attribute of the brand
b. Competitive advantage appeal: Designed to claim the advertised brand as superior in one or several
aspects
c. Favorable price appeal: Focuses on price advantage of buying the product. E.g. price offs, sale,
discounts
d. News appeal: This appeal uses announcements and news to attract consumers’ attention to the firm’s
new product and services offered
e. Brand popularity appeal: Focuses the messages on the popularity of the brand by presenting the
number and class of consumers using the brand. E.g. World’s number 1 and so on.
2. Emotional Appeal:
Based on various human emotions. Some of them are positive (trust, friendship, love,
romance, security, happiness, glamour, family bonds, etc.)
Some of them are negative (Fear, anger, discomfort, embarrassment etc.
Among various emotional appeals used in advertising the most important are:
a. Fear Appeal: It is the strongest human emotions. But, Low fear= ignored by customer, high
level fear= may not be convincing and believable. So fear should be relatable. E.g. Tooth
decay fear, AIDS leads to death & so on. Fear promotes insecurity.
b. Humor Appeal: Consumer enjoy advertisements that make them laugh. Sometimes joke is
remembered and product is forgotten. Sarcasms and joke on other people are liked by the
younger generations but not well received by the older people.
c. Comfort Appeal: Comfort and luxury are the most cherished desires of human being.
Product like furniture, cars, clothes, and so on are advertised under comfort appeal.
iv. Glamour & Beauty: Consumers are naturally attracted by celebrities such as film
stars, politicians, businessmen and sports persons. Consumer have strong desires to
look as beautiful as film stars, and so on
v. Family Bonds: Very important emotional appeal as common family oriented
customer can relate. E.g. Horlicks
vi. Patriotism: Not so popular but effective in related fields. E.g Farmer’s product and
so on.
3. Sex Appeals:
Most used advertising appeals and has become much more common in TV advertising.
It is very effective to build brand awareness as it shocks viewers.
Even the controversy resulting from the sex appeal also provides higher brand exposure in
the society.
Sex appeal is implemented in five ways:
a. Overt sex: Use of models to be involved in sexual acts up to permissible level.
b. Nudity: Use of nude situation in the ad. This often leads to controversies
c. Sexual suggestiveness: Use of partners in adv. The ad make viewers to use their imagination.
E.g. Kingfishers Beer, the advertiser is making a suggestion to what will happen afterwards.
d. Subliminal techniques: Focuses on viewer’s imagination. Use of icons to affect viewers’
mind so that they can imagine that certain sexual activities is taking place without seeing the
activity.
e. Sensuality: Use of popular models that are perceived to be sex symbols in the society. They
portrays images of romance.
Execution frameworks in advertising

Execution framework is the way in which the advertising appeal is presented to the target
audience. The advertising appeal is like the script in the movie, while the execution framework
is the plot of the movie.
The major execution frameworks used in advertisements are:
i. Animation: Animated characters can be human, animal or product personification
ii. Slice-of-life: Attempts to provide solutions the everyday problems of buyers. E.g. Dandruff,
tooth decay and so on
iii. Dramatization: Uses a higher level of excitement and suspense to tell the story and build the
story to crisis point (climax)
iv. Testimonials: Uses customers to tell about their positive experience with the product(brand).
v. Authoritative: Attempts to convince the buyer that a given product(brand) is superior to other
brands
vi. Demonstration: Shows a product in actual use situation. Highlights mainly on
the product’s attributes and benefits
vii. Fantasy: Lift the viewers beyond the real world to a make believe experiences.
Most common fantasies are love, sex, romance and so on.
viii. Informative: The most simple as it presents information in straight forward
manner. Suitable for radio ads.
COLOUR & SPECIAL EFFECTS IN
ADVERTISING
Color are essentially the light sensation produced by an object on the human eye.
Colors make advertisement look attractive, attention getting, create moods and
highlight elements of the advertisements. The real world is colorful and use of color
in advertisements gives sense of realism to them.
Qualities of color:
a. Hue
• Distinguishes one color from another like red, blue, green, yellow
b. Value
• Indicates the extent of brightness or darkness of a color. E.g. light and dark green
c. Chroma
• Richness of a color. Quality indicates the strength of a color
Role of various colours in advertisement

a. Black : Authority and power

b. White : Purity& sterility
c. Red : Heat & emotionally intense
d. Pink : Romantic
e. Blue : Cool &peaceful
f. Green : Calming & refreshing
g. Yellow : Attracts attention
h. Purple : Royalty& connotes luxury, wealth, sophistication
i. Brown : Earth, solidity and seriousness
Functions of color:

1. Attract attention : Make ad attractive and interesting

2. Provide realism : Add reality and value to the advertisement
3. Build brand identity : Used as a brand elements such as red for coke & blue for
pepsi
4. Interpretation : Able to pass on important message to the
consumer.

Limitations of color:
 Cost (2X cost is higher than black and white color ad)
 Relevancy (Use of color in print media is costly as well as wasteful)
 Uniqueness (Color ads = common, Black and white = bring back old memories)